If you thought 2016 was full of market maelstroms and geopolitical gotchas, 2017's 'known unknowns' suggest a year of more mayhem awaits...
Here's a selection of key events in the year ahead (and links to Bloomberg's quick-takes on each).
January
The core thread of next year's relatively downbeat "surprises" from Seabreeze Partners' Doug Kass is that the crowd is wearing Trump-colored glasses and that the single-biggest surprise is how quickly the bloom comes off the Trump flower.
In 2017 Donald Trump no longer will be seen as an invincible politician or a self-proclaimed stock market savior (see Surprise #3). Rather, he will learn, the hard way, the difficulty in governing and what Mario Cuomo meant when he said, "Campaign in poetry, govern in prose."
Submitted by Robert Steele via TheMindUnleashed.com,
"Dear Mr. Trump,
I am among the tens of millions who voted for you, and also among the twenty thousand or so that spent fifteen months obsessively devoted to getting you elected. I went to bed in tears on election night, only to be woken at midnight by my wife to watch the miracle unfold. Perhaps someone will read this and in a second miracle, you will hear my voice. I am going to make seven points with seven paragraphs and seven graphics.
While being capable of imagining a 'black swan' event implies its non-existence; given the level of groupthink consensus agreement that the bond bull is dead, inflation is back, central banks are maxed out, and global fiscal stimulus will save the world, we thought a look at some of the more unsusual, unpredictable expectations for 2017 was worthwhile...
Following Nomura's list of "Grey Swans", Reuters' Jamie McGeever looks across the analysts' outlooks for 2017 and finds these non-consensus wrinkles in the narrative...
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
On December 9, a panel of 3 judges in the Netherlands convicted Geert Wilders of incitement to discrimination, and also of insulting an ethnic group.
Nonetheless, the two most recent polls show Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam, anti-migration politician far ahead of the pack.
Wilders Heads Polls